Into a Canyon Deep by James Lindholm

Author:James Lindholm [Lindholm, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CamCat Publishing

28

The northwest wind blew all night and into the next day. The MacGreggor remained tied up at the dock.

The remainder of the previous evening passed without event. Chris and Abby had picked up Thig and returned to Margaret’s, where all slept well after a couple more hours of additional rehashing, motivated primarily by Margaret. The day’s events had evidently not dampened her natural desire to expound on a given issue from all angles, leaving no stone unturned.

The local evening news programs from the night before had reported on the activities of the hazmat crew in a characteristically vapid fashion. There were live feeds of talking heads from the dock in Monterey, coupled with stock video of the MacGreggor pulling away from the dock, but almost no facts.

Since the news crews had missed the actual offloading of the barrel, they had to make do with what they could. They had interviewed a family of tourists walking along the breakwater. They hadn’t seen anything and didn’t have much of an opinion on the subject. Chris wondered, not for the first time, how anyone actually learned anything from the news anymore if they didn’t already have insider knowledge. The morning papers also held nothing of interest with respect to the barrel discovery.

Chris headed out to CMEx early, with Thig in tow, anticipating a strategy session with Mac. The Center was on the campus of the university’s marine lab, about fifteen minutes north of Carmel, located at the end of Monterey’s Cannery Row, just over the border in Pacific Grove. The campus was situated right on the water, immediately adjacent to the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium.

CMEx was housed in the newest building on the small campus. The five-story, fifty-thousand-square-foot building had created a bit of an uproar on the small, historic campus. The first floor contained a large experimental aquarium system, which drew saltwater from an intake pipe a half mile offshore. Laboratory experiments were conducted here to complement the field studies conducted in Monterey Bay and beyond.

The ground floor also housed the ROV lab and several engineering workshops for fabricating anything that scientists needed to conduct their research. A handful of lecture halls and teaching laboratories were on the floor above, and the top three stories served as offices for faculty, staff, and students associated with CMEx.

The building’s façade was constructed entirely of glass, which, when the fog didn’t get in the way, reflected sunsets to an extent that Chris had never encountered before. The entire building seemed to act like an amplifier designed solely for the purpose of projecting the beauty of a Monterey Bay sunset over the whole campus.

The planned meeting with Mac didn’t materialize; he was a no-show. Moreover, Mac’s voicemail message didn’t offer much in the way of details as to where he was or what he was doing, just that he was looking into something and would be back in touch shortly. He’d gone off the reservation before, and Chris knew better than to question what Mac was up to.

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